Serpentine Galleries commissioned a digital work by Ed Atkins in autumn 2014 that saw the artist begin a decade of personal exchanges.
As part of Ed Atkins’ contribution to Extinction Marathon: Visions of the Future, Serpentine Galleries co-commissioned a new work – www.80072745 – in partnership with The Space. Formally conceived as an epilogue to the event, Atkins’ commission fosters a sense of entropic endurance, reaching out indiscriminately but personally to those participating in, connecting with and following the Marathon as it unfolds backwards in time. Sign yourself over to the next decade or so of this personalised exchange at http://www.80072745.net/80072745/.
Commencing the morning after the night before, the commission will extend for at least a decade into the future, with Atkins writing personal emails in a cumbersome past tense to all those who come into contact with the Marathon, the focus being on numbers, statistics and their delimiting effect on our lives. Signalling an epistolary exercise in speculation and reflection with a bureaucratic twist, the work attempts to recoup some of the existential *value* of both the sender and its recipient.
Atkins’ digital commission is one of several online works commissioned in partnership with The Space. The commissions will be hosted through The Space, alongside EXTINCT.LY, which deploys a digital map of the world’s surface to assemble the contributions of online participants in this year’s Extinction Marathon.
Ed Atkins lives in London, UK. This year he has had solo shows at Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Serpentine North Gallery, London, and with Bruce Nauman at Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany. Recent group exhibitions include, ‘Teen Paranormal Romance’, Renaissance Institute, Chicago, USA; Biennale of Moving Image, Centre d’Art Contemporaire, Geneva, Switzerland; ‘Europe Europe’, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway; and ’14 Rooms’, Art Basel 2014, Basel, Switzerland.
Two books – ‘A Seer Reader’ (Koenig Books) and ‘Ed Atkins’ (JRP Ringier) – were both published this year.
